Dictionary of Prakrit for Jain Literature Vol 01 Fasc 01

Author(s): A M Ghatage
Publisher: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

Page 28

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phones in some dialects like Magadhi, the use of and what is written as an 17 ETT is treated as a separate vor may be taken as a matter of free variation in the phoneme before the semi-vowels, fricatives and the aspirate other Prakrit dialects as is reflected in the MSS. b, as a para-8qvarna before the stops, and as a Ę in the tradition, which ruas parallel to the use of m at final position. The distinction between short and long a and the corresponding puro vowel. The etymologically and it and the mark of nasalisation of vowels will be valid distinction between the presence or absence of a n treated as mere diacritical marks and will not affect the sound in the corresponding Sanskrit words may not be alphabetical order allowed to decide the writing system of MIA., when they
VI. ABBREVIATIONS have completely merged together. Of course if the dialect shows a phonemic difference between the geminated wa
Various types of abbreviations bave to be used in a
comprehensive dictionary in order to make the work as and geminated una or nne, it will have to be kept intact.
compact as possible. These abbreviations fall into a num(5) The remaining writing conventions may be ber of groups : (i) abbreviations of grammatical terms merely stated. The writing for a which is found in and terms of general nature used in textual and literary the southern MSS. and editions is uniformly followed. criticism. These have been mostly standardised and they The representation of a double aspirated consonant by will be easily koown. (ii) There are symbols wbich will using two aspirates together, which is found in some of be used to make clear some aspects of linguistics which, the earlier editions of Prakrit works will be represented otherwise, will take a lot of space if explained in so many by the more phonetically accurate method of using the words. (iii) Then the names of various languages and unaspirated consonant as the first member of the cluster. dialects will have to be indicated by abbreviations and The zga ty or a will not be distinguished from the also the names of ancient writers and modern scholars normala or , as was done by Pischel in his Prakrit will be abbreviated when reference is made to them. grammar because it is not found necessary. The diffe- There will be abbreviations of the names of the series of rence between the short and long T and sounds can be publications and otber bibliographical information to be ascertained from their environment and hence not always given. Above all, a dictionary which is giving quotations necessary to be indicated. This may be necessary only in from various books on an extensive scale must make the case of the final syllable in Apab'ıramsa, where the use of abbreviations of the names of books which form principle of anceps is not valid. The MS. tradition of the corpus of the dictionary. As these dames of books writing and 3 in place of short and is often are expected to occur thousands of times, it is essential to retained without normalisation, because it cannot be make the abbreviations selt-explanatory or at least easily precisely decided to what extent it is phonetically different recallable, even at the cost of making them a little in view of the tradition current in lodo-Aryan languages longer, when once they have been noted. to consider and as shortened forms of T and sat. Abbreviations which occur in books which are to be Thus in the environment of a cluster wbich follows, no read continuously and which deal with a specific subject distinction of a phonemic nature is found batween i) [
ween L or topic will not be found suitable in a dictionary which or (e :), and the sounds may be really different in each
is to be constantly referred to and in which the context case. The citations will follow the writing found in the
extends over one small entry and gives no help in guessing editions used.
the source. The practice followed in the lexicons of
the classical languages of Europe viz. to use the namo of V. TRANSLITERATION
the author first and then indicate his work, will have to be The transliteration used is the usual one for Indo- reversed in the case of the classical languages of India. Aryan languages. Particularly to be noted are T TT The primary reference will be to the book and only in as †, st as $, as $ and fast as h, the nasalisation of case of homophonous titles of books will tho Outhor's vowels shown as on Devanagari letters as ~. Accents name will be given to distinguish between them. In the are not marked. Taking into consideration all the Prakrit Indian literature as a whole, the names of books aro dialects together, the alphabetical order will be as follows: found to be longer than those of the authors and homoBT, 6, 1, 3, 5, #, ., , 11, ait, -, (:), . , phony is prevalent in both the types of namos. The 1, ( ),%, , ( ), 2, 3, 2, 2, 01, , , , , , method used is to combine the abbreviated name of the 9, 4, 4, 7, 8, 4, 7, , 2, 1, 4, 8, . In following this book, followed by the abbreviated name of the author in alphabetical order, an attempt is made to keep it as close brackets. As the number of books to be roforrod to goes to Sanskrit as possible, because nearly all words will be on increasing, the abbreviations also become longer to followed by their Sanskrit equivalents. For this purpose avoid overlap.